A few years ago I wrote a piece that I never intended to show anyone. It was a story about one who got away. I will not say 'the' one, as there were arguably many that I let walk out of my life, some without much of a second thought, some with hours of pointless analysis, some in the romantic sense and some not. Except, it wasn’t a story about that at all. It was a story about regret, many things I never said, many things I did. Except, in many ways it wasn't. It was a story about realizations. Except, I'm not sure there was anything worthwhile about my conclusions. It was a story about one particular day. Except, it really embodied months, years even. At the core, it was a story about me. Except, it wasn’t a story at all. And, while the words would barely be significant to most readers, it resonated with me in a way I couldn’t shake, even much later. After filling pages with confessions, some I hadn’t before admitted to even myself, I saw for the first time the reality of a situation I had been unable to see with any clarity when it mattered. Or perhaps I just saw the version I wanted to see so many years later, although that perspective would make me seem like somewhat of a masochist. Perhaps I am. The pages made a typical scenario, one that almost everyone has experienced in some degree or another, seem quite tragic. Words are magical like that. As I wrote, I wiped away tears I did not know I was holding back. Words are therapeutic like that. The hardest things to let go of are the things you don’t even realize you are still holding onto. Once there were no more words to write I sat back and tried to name it. I hit “file”,” I hit “save as” and I stared at the unaddressed love letter (if you will) that would never be sent. I wanted to call it something worthy of the feelings it surfaced, the admissions I had guarded for so long, the reflections it had captured. I sat and thought about it for a long time and nothing seemed right. So it remained untitled. And a week later I returned to it and tried again. After a few weeks I realized sometimes, when everything’s been said, there isn’t anything left to call it. It remains untitled.
Upon revisiting the piece, I got to thinking about days gone by. There is a certain clarity that can only come with the passage of time, the ability to recognize things once the ‘danger’ of having to act on such realization has passed, or when you can look back and appreciate how much you’ve grown and how much you’ve learned. Most people can acknowledge old flaws, bad trends, stupid past decisions with a laugh, but admitting current ones is nearly impossible. Many of us have the ability to look back on ourselves with an honesty that is simply impossible in the moment. There are aspects of our past that may not have stood out at the time, may not have seemed like anything notable, but in hindsight we realize they were everything or they could have been everything. Then again, as the years pass and the dust settles, the truth also gets buried in there somewhere. And sometimes, its difficult to recognize what is truly real. We create memories. We exaggerate relationships. We convince ourselves of truths that never were. When you blow the dust of an old photograph, all that remains are smiling faces. We are rarely so happy as our photo albums would lead others to believe, yet we too are deceived by smiles from our past, by embraces we barely remember, by body language and posture and a glitter in the eyes that no one else can really see. Do we fabricate the predictable one who got away to add a certain level of drama to our otherwise routine existence? Do we write our own tale of unrequited love because we forgot how to believe in modern day love stories? Time has a way of blurring memories. Things that were once so vivid, so important, so real, tend to fade as time goes by. It is a sentiment captured by many song lyrics. (“There are things I remember, things I forget. I miss you. I guess that I should.” But should we?). They say time heals all wounds and I suppose in most ways it does, it certainly dims memories, but sometimes it magnifies others. Sometimes the act of putting things into words reassures you it was ever real. But, sometimes just an old song can you bring you back to some particular experience with such vivid recollection it is as though time has not budged at all. Sometimes it takes a reunion with old friends to remember defining times. And, sometimes just glancing at a name or a photo can send you down a whimsical memory lane. Sometimes It requires validation. Sometimes it validates you.
Then I got to thinking about the things that were, the things I was, the things I wanted, both then and now. How have I changed? What have I achieved? What am I still striving for? What did I let go entirely, and why? As we grow older I expect moments of reflecting on the ‘good old days’ will become more frequent. As our relationships grow and change we’ll find our hearts aching for old friends, for the comfort of what that meant. It’s a strange feeling to recall a pivotal memory and realize the other parties are just people you once knew. I’m certainly not advocating for living in the past, rather to look back with fondness on the many people and experiences that got us to where we are today. But then of course, the trick -the hard part - is to focus on where you are today. Don’t dwell on regret but learn from the decisions, or the lack of decisions. I don’t buy into the everything happens for a reason cop-out, but every step or misstep on the road of our life has shaped our path in some way. Our past is what made us who we are today, for better or worse. I think so many of us get caught up in the day to day, the routine, the life we’ve stumbled upon and we lose sight of what our former selves were striving for. We lose sight of who we were. It’s easy to wake up one morning and be hit with the weight of years gone by. Or, maybe we got to exactly where we wanted to be and learned it wasn’t what we thought it would be, we learned it wasn’t what we wanted after all, and then we feel paralyzed by the weight of our decisions. But, the thing is, it is rarely what we thought it would be. It is rarely what we expected. There's always some weight that seems to be holding us down. It's easier to just not fight against it. It's easier to do what's comfortable, to ignore those moments that gives us pause. We can’t go back, we can’t change the things we did, but we can change the things that will be. I believe in second chances. I believe its never too late. It is a common piece of advice that we regret not the decisions we make (or the things we do) but rather the decisions we do not make (the things we do not do). I’ve learned in reflecting on the past, I regret both, but it is the decisions I did not make, the risks I did not take, that I regret more. And, so in reading a past mini memoir on another subject matter entirely, I realize the importance of learning from my past inactions. It gives me the courage to embrace change, to take risks, to make decisions about my future that perhaps veer from the charted course. There is much, so much, that I do not know but I do know that I don't want to write another untitled piece about something I didn't do today.
No comments:
Post a Comment